late report on ST: Into Darkness
The frau is a dear woman, but she has a regrettable tendency to drop in at the local video emporium and make selections unsupervised. Yesterday she brought home Star Trek: Into Darkness even though neither of us had been impressed by the previous entry in the franchise reboot, Star Trek 90210.
I should perhaps mention that I was never a particular fan of the Trek universe. The first iteration was cheesy. I caught several episodes of Rev 2, the one with the bald guy; probably only fractions of episodes of the other dozen spinoffs. So I may be overlooking some critical context here as I make the following random observations:
Executive Summary: The film was not made with the sensibilities of a sixtysomething in mind. I’m aware that there are sound economic/demographic reasons for this, but still...
They’re all so fucking young. I never thought I’d use “gravitas” and “William Shatner” in the same sentence, but most of the cast look like they’re barely out of high school, and it’s difficult to imagine “The Federation” letting them run around a multizillion dollar interstellar spacecraft without an adult monitor. This was a dealbreaker in the previous film as well.
Abuse of suspension of disbelief. Where to begin? Let’s see, “Captain Kirk” makes the equivalent of a cellphone call from another stellar system (hence, a minimum 4.37 light years distant) to his former chief engineer*, who has very sensibly spent most of the film up until this point getting drunk in a San Francisco nightclub. Audio is clear as a bell, and not the least bit of signal lag. Hell, you’d get over a second’s worth talking to the moon. We’re talking a signal strength of, like, five hundred bars here, and apparently really good network coverage. I’d hate to deal with the roaming charges, though.
Suspension of disbelief, con’t. Oh, the usual. The Enterprise displays a remarkable structural integrity as it plunges toward San Francisco. “Caught by earth’s gravity” (from, by the looks of it, something like the distance of the average geostationary orbit) the crippled spacecraft falls toward the planet. The crew are all hurled about hither and thither as though the conventions of “free fall” had been suspended, although whenever the scene requires it, internal circumstances are magically stabilized. And people griped about Gravity?
Scenery chewing. Peter Weller did the best he could, I suppose, with the role as written, but Sterling Hayden was far more fun in Dr. Strangelove.
Oh, puh-leeze. In the middle of potentially lethal action, let’s spend a minute talking about relationships! And spare me the bromance.
CGI fatigue. I contrast the cocktail of visual bombast and brainlessness of productions like this to the low-key but thoughtful approaches taken by some low-budget productions in living memory—I’m thinking Gattaca, Code 46 and even 1980’s The Lathe of Heaven—that contrived to engage the frontal lobes rather than the R-cortex.
These are admittedly none of them particularly profound critiques, and I know that in essaying this review I am rather like a vegan explaining why last night’s serving of steak tartare didn’t work for me. But when I think upon the pains I’m taking, in composing my unpublishable tale, to eliminate gross implausibilities wherever I can, it’s irritating to see these screenwriters and this director piling them on instead. The film is not merely an affront to intelligence, but a gibbering, shit-flinging, insensate display of brainlessness.
cordially,
*Once I recognized the actor I began to think about what a wonderful film Pegg and Edgar Wright might have written and directed in place of this bloated ephemera.
I should perhaps mention that I was never a particular fan of the Trek universe. The first iteration was cheesy. I caught several episodes of Rev 2, the one with the bald guy; probably only fractions of episodes of the other dozen spinoffs. So I may be overlooking some critical context here as I make the following random observations:
Executive Summary: The film was not made with the sensibilities of a sixtysomething in mind. I’m aware that there are sound economic/demographic reasons for this, but still...
They’re all so fucking young. I never thought I’d use “gravitas” and “William Shatner” in the same sentence, but most of the cast look like they’re barely out of high school, and it’s difficult to imagine “The Federation” letting them run around a multizillion dollar interstellar spacecraft without an adult monitor. This was a dealbreaker in the previous film as well.
Abuse of suspension of disbelief. Where to begin? Let’s see, “Captain Kirk” makes the equivalent of a cellphone call from another stellar system (hence, a minimum 4.37 light years distant) to his former chief engineer*, who has very sensibly spent most of the film up until this point getting drunk in a San Francisco nightclub. Audio is clear as a bell, and not the least bit of signal lag. Hell, you’d get over a second’s worth talking to the moon. We’re talking a signal strength of, like, five hundred bars here, and apparently really good network coverage. I’d hate to deal with the roaming charges, though.
Suspension of disbelief, con’t. Oh, the usual. The Enterprise displays a remarkable structural integrity as it plunges toward San Francisco. “Caught by earth’s gravity” (from, by the looks of it, something like the distance of the average geostationary orbit) the crippled spacecraft falls toward the planet. The crew are all hurled about hither and thither as though the conventions of “free fall” had been suspended, although whenever the scene requires it, internal circumstances are magically stabilized. And people griped about Gravity?
Scenery chewing. Peter Weller did the best he could, I suppose, with the role as written, but Sterling Hayden was far more fun in Dr. Strangelove.
Oh, puh-leeze. In the middle of potentially lethal action, let’s spend a minute talking about relationships! And spare me the bromance.
CGI fatigue. I contrast the cocktail of visual bombast and brainlessness of productions like this to the low-key but thoughtful approaches taken by some low-budget productions in living memory—I’m thinking Gattaca, Code 46 and even 1980’s The Lathe of Heaven—that contrived to engage the frontal lobes rather than the R-cortex.
These are admittedly none of them particularly profound critiques, and I know that in essaying this review I am rather like a vegan explaining why last night’s serving of steak tartare didn’t work for me. But when I think upon the pains I’m taking, in composing my unpublishable tale, to eliminate gross implausibilities wherever I can, it’s irritating to see these screenwriters and this director piling them on instead. The film is not merely an affront to intelligence, but a gibbering, shit-flinging, insensate display of brainlessness.
cordially,
*Once I recognized the actor I began to think about what a wonderful film Pegg and Edgar Wright might have written and directed in place of this bloated ephemera.
